The search to find more effective drugs to increase mental ability and intelligence capacity with neither toxicity nor serious side effects continues. But there are limitations. Although the ingredients may be separately known to have cognition-enhancing effects, randomized controlled trials of the combined effects of cognitive enhancement compounds are sparse.
And the drugs are not terribly difficult to get, depending on where you’re located. Modafinil has an annual global share of $700 million, with high estimated off-label use. Although these drugs can be purchased over the internet, their legal status varies between countries. For example, it is legal to possess and use Modafinil in the United Kingdom without a prescription, but not in United States.
Meanwhile, the APAC has been identified as the fastest growing regional market. The regions massive population size of which a significant share belongs to the geriatric demographic is expected to impact growth. Moreover, the region is undergoing healthcare reforms and is increasingly adopting advanced medical technology. Growth opportunities in this regional market are high.

Bacopa is a supplement herb often used for memory or stress adaptation. Its chronic effects reportedly take many weeks to manifest, with no important acute effects. Out of curiosity, I bought 2 bottles of Bacognize Bacopa pills and ran a non-randomized non-blinded ABABA quasi-self-experiment from June 2014 to September 2015, measuring effects on my memory performance, sleep, and daily self-ratings of mood/productivity. Because of the very slow onset, small effective sample size, definite temporal trends probably unrelated to Bacopa, and noise in the variables, the results were as expected, ambiguous, and do not strongly support any correlation between Bacopa and memory/sleep/self-rating (+/-/- respectively).

As for newer nootropic drugs, there are unknown risks. “Piracetam has been studied for decades,” says cognitive neuroscientist Andrew Hill, the founder of a neurofeedback company in Los Angeles called Peak Brain Institute. But “some of [the newer] compounds are things that some random editor found in a scientific article, copied the formula down and sent it to China and had a bulk powder developed three months later that they’re selling. Please don’t take it, people!”

Vitamin B12 is also known as Cobalamin and is a water-soluble essential vitamin. A (large) deficiency of Vitamin B12 will ultimately lead to cognitive impairment [52]. Older people and people who don’t eat meat are at a higher risk than young people who eat more meat. And people with depression have less Vitamin B12 than the average population [53].

Several new medications are on the market and in development for Alzheimer's disease, a progressive neurological disease leading to memory loss, language deterioration, and confusion that afflicts about 4.5 million Americans and is expected to strike millions more as the baby boom generation ages. Yet the burning question for those who aren't staring directly into the face of Alzheimer's is whether these medications might make us smarter.

Ethical issues also arise with the use of drugs to boost brain power. Their use as cognitive enhancers isn’t currently regulated. But should it be, just as the use of certain performance-enhancing drugs is regulated for professional athletes? Should universities consider dope testing to check that students aren’t gaining an unfair advantage through drug use?
None of that has kept entrepreneurs and their customers from experimenting and buying into the business of magic pills, however. In 2015 alone, the nootropics business raked in over $1 billion dollars, and web sites like the nootropics subreddit, the Bluelight forums, and Bulletproof Exec are popular and packed with people looking for easy ways to boost their mental performance. Still, this bizarre, Philip K. Dick-esque world of smart drugs is a tough pill to swallow. To dive into the topic and explain, I spoke to Kamal Patel, Director of evidence-based medical database Examine.com, and even tried a few commercially-available nootropics myself.

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In sum, the evidence concerning stimulant effects of working memory is mixed, with some findings of enhancement and some null results, although no findings of overall performance impairment. A few studies showed greater enhancement for less able participants, including two studies reporting overall null results. When significant effects have been found, their sizes vary from small to large, as shown in Table 4. Taken together, these results suggest that stimulants probably do enhance working memory, at least for some individuals in some task contexts, although the effects are not so large or reliable as to be observable in all or even most working memory studies.

A television advertisement goes: "It's time to let Focus Factor be your memory-fog lifter." But is this supplement up to task? Focus Factor wastes no time, whether paid airtime or free online presence: it claims to be America's #1 selling brain health supplement with more than 4 million bottles sold and millions across the country actively caring for their brain health. It deems itself instrumental in helping anyone stay focused and on top of his game at home, work, or school. Learn More...

…The first time I took supplemental potassium (50% US RDA in a lot of water), it was like a brain fog lifted that I never knew I had, and I felt profoundly energized in a way that made me feel exercise was reasonable and prudent, which resulted in me and the roommate that had just supplemented potassium going for an hour long walk at 2AM. Experiences since then have not been quite so profound (which probably was so stark for me as I was likely fixing an acute deficiency), but I can still count on a moderately large amount of potassium to give me a solid, nearly side effect free performance boost for a few hours…I had been doing Bikram yoga on and off, and I think I wasn’t keeping up the practice because I wasn’t able to properly rehydrate myself.
One item always of interest to me is sleep; a stimulant is no good if it damages my sleep (unless that’s what it is supposed to do, like modafinil) - anecdotes and research suggest that it does. Over the past few days, my Zeo sleep scores continued to look normal. But that was while not taking nicotine much later than 5 PM. In lieu of a different ml measurer to test my theory that my syringe is misleading me, I decide to more directly test nicotine’s effect on sleep by taking 2ml at 10:30 PM, and go to bed at 12:20; I get a decent ZQ of 94 and I fall asleep in 16 minutes, a bit below my weekly average of 19 minutes. The next day, I take 1ml directly before going to sleep at 12:20; the ZQ is 95 and time to sleep is 14 minutes.
One claim was partially verified in passing by Eliezer Yudkowsky (Supplementing potassium (citrate) hasn’t helped me much, but works dramatically for Anna, Kevin, and Vassar…About the same as drinking a cup of coffee - i.e., it works as a perker-upper, somehow. I’m not sure, since it doesn’t do anything for me except possibly mitigate foot cramps.)
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Low-tech methods of cognitive enhancement include many components of what has traditionally been viewed as a healthy lifestyle, such as exercise, good nutrition, adequate sleep, and stress management. These low-tech methods nevertheless belong in a discussion of brain enhancement because, in addition to benefiting cognitive performance, their effects on brain function have been demonstrated (Almeida et al., 2002; Boonstra, Stins, Daffertshofer, & Beek, 2007; Hillman, Erickson, & Kramer, 2008; Lutz, Slagter, Dunne, & Davidson, 2008; Van Dongen, Maislin, Mullington, & Dinges, 2003).
If you’re suffering from blurred or distorted vision or you’ve noticed a sudden and unexplained decline in the clarity of your vision, do not try to self-medicate. It is one thing to promote better eyesight from an existing and long-held baseline, but if you are noticing problems with your eyes, then you should see an optician and a doctor to rule out underlying medical conditions.
None of that has kept entrepreneurs and their customers from experimenting and buying into the business of magic pills, however. In 2015 alone, the nootropics business raked in over $1 billion dollars, and web sites like the nootropics subreddit, the Bluelight forums, and Bulletproof Exec are popular and packed with people looking for easy ways to boost their mental performance. Still, this bizarre, Philip K. Dick-esque world of smart drugs is a tough pill to swallow. To dive into the topic and explain, I spoke to Kamal Patel, Director of evidence-based medical database Examine.com, and even tried a few commercially-available nootropics myself.
For instance, they point to the U.S. Army's use of stimulants for soldiers to stave off sleep and to stay sharp. But the Army cares little about the long-term health effects of soldiers, who come home scarred physically or mentally, if they come home at all. It's a risk-benefit decision for the Army, and in a life-or-death situation, stimulants help.
If you’re considering taking pharmaceutical nootropics, then it’s important that you learn as much as you can about how they work and that you seek professional advice before taking them. Be sure to read the side effects and contraindications of the nootropic that you are considering taking, and do not use it if you have any pre-existing medical conditions or allergies. If you’re taking other medications, then discuss your plans with a doctor or pharmacist to make sure that your nootropic is safe for you to use.
One should note the serious caveats here: it is a small in vitro study of a single category of human cells with an effect size that is not clear on a protein which feeds into who-knows-what pathways. It is not a result in a whole organism on any clinically meaningful endpoint, even if we take it at face-value (many results never replicate). A look at followup work citing Rapuri et al 2007 is not encouraging: Google Scholar lists no human studies of any kind, much less high-quality studies like RCTs; just some rat followups on the calcium effect. This is not to say Rapuri et al 2007 is a bad study, just that it doesn’t bear the weight people are putting on it: if you enjoy caffeine, this is close to zero evidence that you should reduce or drop caffeine consumption; if you’re taking too much caffeine, you already have plenty of reasons to reduce; if you’re drinking lots of coffee, you already have plenty of reasons to switch to tea; etc.
Either way, if more and more people use these types of stimulants, there may be a risk that we will find ourselves in an ever-expanding neurological arm’s race, argues philosophy professor Nicole Vincent. But is this necessarily a bad thing? No, says Farahany, who sees the improvement in cognitive functioning as a social good that we should pursue. Better brain functioning would result in societal benefits, she argues, “like economic gains or even reducing dangerous errors.”
Minnesota-based Medtronic offers a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-cleared smart pill called PillCam COLON, which provides clear visualization of the colon and is complementary to colonoscopy. It is an alternative for patients who refuse invasive colon exams, have bleeding or sedation risks or inflammatory bowel disease, or have had a previous incomplete colonoscopy. PillCam COLON allows more people to get screened for colorectal cancer with a minimally invasive, radiation-free option. The research focus for WCEs is on effective localization, steering and control of capsules. Device development relies on leveraging applied science and technologies for better system performance, rather than completely reengineering the pill.
Four of the studies focused on middle and high school students, with varied results. Boyd, McCabe, Cranford, and Young (2006) found a 2.3% lifetime prevalence of nonmedical stimulant use in their sample, and McCabe, Teter, and Boyd (2004) found a 4.1% lifetime prevalence in public school students from a single American public school district. Poulin (2001) found an 8.5% past-year prevalence in public school students from four provinces in the Atlantic region of Canada. A more recent study of the same provinces found a 6.6% and 8.7% past-year prevalence for MPH and AMP use, respectively (Poulin, 2007).
What if you could simply take a pill that would instantly make you more intelligent? One that would enhance your cognitive capabilities including attention, memory, focus, motivation and other higher executive functions? If you have ever seen the movie Limitless, you have an idea of what this would look like—albeit the exaggerated Hollywood version. The movie may be fictional but the reality may not be too far behind.
Autism Brain brain fuel brain health Brain Injury broth Cholesterol choline DAI DHA Diabetes digestion Exercise Fat Functional Medicine gastric Gluten gut-brain Gut Brain Axis gut health Health intestinal permeability keto Ketogenic leaky Gut Learning Medicine Metabolism Music Therapy neurology Neuroplasticity neurorehabilitation Nutrition omega Paleo Physical Therapy Recovery Science second brain superfood synaptogenesis TBI Therapy tube feed uridine
One study of helicopter pilots suggested that 600 mg of modafinil given in three doses can be used to keep pilots alert and maintain their accuracy at pre-deprivation levels for 40 hours without sleep.[60] However, significant levels of nausea and vertigo were observed. Another study of fighter pilots showed that modafinil given in three divided 100 mg doses sustained the flight control accuracy of sleep-deprived F-117 pilots to within about 27% of baseline levels for 37 hours, without any considerable side effects.[61] In an 88-hour sleep loss study of simulated military grounds operations, 400 mg/day doses were mildly helpful at maintaining alertness and performance of subjects compared to placebo, but the researchers concluded that this dose was not high enough to compensate for most of the effects of complete sleep loss.

Analyzing the results is a little tricky because I was simultaneously running the first magnesium citrate self-experiment, which turned out to cause a quite complex result which looks like a gradually-accumulating overdose negating an initial benefit for net harm, and also toying with LLLT, which turned out to have a strong correlation with benefits. So for the potential small Noopept effect to not be swamped, I need to include those in the analysis. I designed the experiment to try to find the best dose level, so I want to look at an average Noopept effect but also the estimated effect at each dose size in case some are negative (especially in the case of 5-pills/60mg); I included the pilot experiment data as 10mg doses since they were also blind & randomized. Finally, missingness affects analysis: because not every variable is recorded for each date (what was the value of the variable for the blind randomized magnesium citrate before and after I finished that experiment? what value do you assign the Magtein variable before I bought it and after I used it all up?), just running a linear regression may not work exactly as one expects as various days get omitted because part of the data was missing.

Probably most significantly, use of the term “drug” has a significant negative connotation in our culture. “Drugs” are bad: So proclaimed Richard Nixon in the War on Drugs, and Nancy “No to Drugs” Reagan decades later, and other leaders continuing to present day. The legitimate demonization of the worst forms of recreational drugs has resulted in a general bias against the elective use of any chemical to alter the body’s processes. Drug enhancement of athletes is considered cheating – despite the fact that many of these physiological shortcuts obviously work. University students and professionals seeking mental enhancements by taking smart drugs are now facing similar scrutiny.
The difference in standard deviations is not, from a theoretical perspective, all that strange a phenomenon: at the very beginning of this page, I covered some basic principles of nootropics and mentioned how many stimulants or supplements follow a inverted U-curve where too much or too little lead to poorer performance (ironically, one of the examples in Kruschke 2012 was a smart drug which did not affect means but increased standard deviations).

Barbara Sahakian, a neuroscientist at Cambridge University, doesn’t dismiss the possibility of nootropics to enhance cognitive function in healthy people. She would like to see society think about what might be considered acceptable use and where it draws the line – for example, young people whose brains are still developing. But she also points out a big problem: long-term safety studies in healthy people have never been done. Most efficacy studies have only been short-term. “Proving safety and efficacy is needed,” she says.

Board-certified neuropsychologist Brian Lebowitz, PhD and associate clinical professor of neurology at Stony Brook University, explains to MensHealth.com that the term "encompasses so many things," including prescription medications. Brain enhancers fall into two different categories: naturally occurring substances like Ginkgo biloba, creatine and phenibut; and manmade prescription drugs, like Adderall, and over-the-counter supplements such as Noopept.
“In the hospital and ICU struggles, this book and Cavin’s experience are golden, and if we’d have had this book’s special attention to feeding tube nutrition, my son would be alive today sitting right here along with me saying it was the cod liver oil, the fish oil, and other nutrients able to be fed to him instead of the junk in the pharmacy tubes, that got him past the liver-test results, past the internal bleeding, past the brain difficulties controlling so many response-obstacles back then. Back then, the ‘experts’ in rural hospitals were unwilling to listen, ignored my son’s unexpected turnaround when we used codliver oil transdermally on his sore skin, threatened instead to throw me out, but Cavin has his own proof and his accumulated experience in others’ journeys. Cavin’s boxed areas of notes throughout the book on applying the brain nutrient concepts in feeding tubes are powerful stuff, details to grab onto and run with… hammer them!
Caffeine keeps you awake, which keeps you coding. It may also be a nootropic, increasing brain-power. Both desirable results. However, it also inhibits vitamin D receptors, and as such decreases the body’s uptake of this-much-needed-vitamin. OK, that’s not so bad, you’re not getting the maximum dose of vitamin D. So what? Well, by itself caffeine may not cause you any problems, but combined with cutting off a major source of the vitamin - the production via sunlight - you’re leaving yourself open to deficiency in double-quick time.
Piracetam is a reliable supplement for improving creativity. It is an entry level racetam due to its lack of severe side effects and relative subtlety. Piracetam’s effects take hold over time through continual use. There is less instant gratification compared to other brain enhancers. Additionally, this nootropic can enhance holistic thinking, verbal memory, and mental energy levels.
One thing to notice is that the default case matters a lot. This asymmetry is because you switch decisions in different possible worlds - when you would take Adderall but stop you’re in the world where Adderall doesn’t work, and when you wouldn’t take Adderall but do you’re in the world where Adderall does work (in the perfect information case, at least). One of the ways you can visualize this is that you don’t penalize tests for giving you true negative information, and you reward them for giving you true positive information. (This might be worth a post by itself, and is very Litany of Gendlin.)
I almost resigned myself to buying patches to cut (and let the nicotine evaporate) and hope they would still stick on well enough afterwards to be indistinguishable from a fresh patch, when late one sleepless night I realized that a piece of nicotine gum hanging around on my desktop for a week proved useless when I tried it, and that was the answer: if nicotine evaporates from patches, then it must evaporate from gum as well, and if gum does evaporate, then to make a perfect placebo all I had to do was cut some gum into proper sizes and let the pieces sit out for a while. (A while later, I lost a piece of gum overnight and consumed the full 4mg to no subjective effect.) Google searches led to nothing indicating I might be fooling myself, and suggested that evaporation started within minutes in patches and a patch was useless within a day. Just a day is pushing it (who knows how much is left in a useless patch?), so I decided to build in a very large safety factor and let the gum sit for around a month rather than a single day.
In addition, large national surveys, including the NSDUH, have generally classified prescription stimulants with other stimulants including street drugs such as methamphetamine. For example, since 1975, the National Institute on Drug Abuse–sponsored Monitoring the Future (MTF) survey has gathered data on drug use by young people in the United States (Johnston, O’Malley, Bachman, & Schulenberg, 2009a, 2009b). Originally, MTF grouped prescription stimulants under a broader class of stimulants so that respondents were asked specifically about MPH only after they had indicated use of some drug in the category of AMPs. As rates of MPH prescriptions increased and anecdotal reports of nonmedical use grew, the 2001 version of the survey was changed to include a separate standalone question about MPH use. This resulted in more than a doubling of estimated annual use among 12th graders, from 2.4% to 5.1%. More recent data from the MTF suggests Ritalin use has declined (3.4% in 2008). However, this may still underestimate use of MPH, as the question refers specifically to Ritalin and does not include other brand names such as Concerta (an extended release formulation of MPH).
Several studies have assessed the effect of MPH and d-AMP on tasks tapping various other aspects of spatial working memory. Three used the spatial working memory task from the CANTAB battery of neuropsychological tests (Sahakian & Owen, 1992). In this task, subjects search for a target at different locations on a screen. Subjects are told that locations containing a target in previous trials will not contain a target in future trials. Efficient performance therefore requires remembering and avoiding these locations in addition to remembering and avoiding locations already searched within a trial. Mehta et al. (2000) found evidence of greater accuracy with MPH, and Elliott et al. (1997) found a trend for the same. In Mehta et al.’s study, this effect depended on subjects’ working memory ability: the lower a subject’s score on placebo, the greater the improvement on MPH. In Elliott et al.’s study, MPH enhanced performance for the group of subjects who received the placebo first and made little difference for the other group. The reason for this difference is unclear, but as mentioned above, this may reflect ability differences between the groups. More recently, Clatworthy et al. (2009) undertook a positron emission tomography (PET) study of MPH effects on two tasks, one of which was the CANTAB spatial working memory task. They failed to find consistent effects of MPH on working memory performance but did find a systematic relation between the performance effect of the drug in each individual and its effect on individuals’ dopamine activity in the ventral striatum.
And as before, around 9 AM I began to feel the peculiar feeling that I was mentally able and apathetic (in a sort of aboulia way); so I decided to try what helped last time, a short nap. But this time, though I took a full hour, I slept not a wink and my Zeo recorded only 2 transient episodes of light sleep! A back-handed sort of proof of alertness, I suppose. I didn’t bother trying again. The rest of the day was mediocre, and I wound up spending much of it on chores and whatnot out of my control. Mentally, I felt better past 3 PM.
“Such an informative and inspiring read! Insight into how optimal nutrients improved Cavin’s own brain recovery make this knowledge-filled read compelling and relatable. The recommendations are easy to understand as well as scientifically-founded – it’s not another fad diet manual. The additional tools and resources provided throughout make it possible for anyone to integrate these enhancements into their nutritional repertoire. Looking forward to more from Cavin and Feed a Brain!!!!!!”
If stimulants truly enhance cognition but do so to only a small degree, this raises the question of whether small effects are of practical use in the real world. Under some circumstances, the answer would undoubtedly be yes. Success in academic and occupational competitions often hinges on the difference between being at the top or merely near the top. A scholarship or a promotion that can go to only one person will not benefit the runner-up at all. Hence, even a small edge in the competition can be important.

The evidence? A 2012 study in Greece found it can boost cognitive function in adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI), a type of disorder marked by forgetfulness and problems with language, judgement, or planning that are more severe than average “senior moments,” but are not serious enough to be diagnosed as dementia. In some people, MCI will progress into dementia.

As with any thesis, there are exceptions to this general practice. For example, theanine for dogs is sold under the brand Anxitane is sold at almost a dollar a pill, and apparently a month’s supply costs $50+ vs $13 for human-branded theanine; on the other hand, this thesis predicts downgrading if the market priced pet versions higher than human versions, and that Reddit poster appears to be doing just that with her dog.↩
There are certain risks associated with smart pills that might restrain their use. A smart pill usually leaves the body within two weeks. Sometimes, the pill might get lodged in the digestive tract rather than exiting the body via normal bowel movements. The risk might be higher in people with a tumor, Crohns disease, or some surgery within that area that lead to narrowing of the digestive tract. CT scan is usually performed in people with high-risk to assess the narrowing of the tract. However, the pill might still be lodged even if the results are negative for the CT scan, which might lead to bowel obstruction and can be removed either by surgery or traditional endoscopy. Smart pills might lead to skin irritation, which results in mild redness and need to be treated topically. It may also lead to capsule aspiration, which involves the capsule going down the wrong pipe and entering the airway instead of the esophagus. This might result in choking and death if immediate bronchoscopic extraction is not performed. Patients with comorbidities related to brain injury or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease may be at a higher risk. So, the health risks associated with the use of smart pills are hindering the smart pills technology market. The other factors, such as increasing cost with technological advancement and ethical constraints are also hindering the market.
Capsule Connection sells 1000 00 pills (the largest pills) for $9. I already have a pill machine, so that doesn’t count (a sunk cost). If we sum the grams per day column from the first table, we get 9.75 grams a day. Each 00 pill can take around 0.75 grams, so we need 13 pills. (Creatine is very bulky, alas.) 13 pills per day for 1000 days is 13,000 pills, and 1,000 pills is $9 so we need 13 units and 13 times 9 is $117.

Serotonin, or 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HTP), is another primary neurotransmitter and controls major features of the mental landscape including mood, sleep and appetite. Serotonin is produced within the body by exposure, which is one reason that the folk-remedy of “getting some sun” to fight depression is scientifically credible. Many foods contain natural serotonergic (serotonin-promoting or releasing) compounds, including the well-known chemical L-Tryptophan found in turkey, which can promote sleep after big Thanksgiving dinners.

My predictions were substantially better than random chance7, so my default belief - that Adderall does affect me and (mostly) for the better - is borne out. I usually sleep very well and 3 separate incidents of horrible sleep in a few weeks seems rather unlikely (though I didn’t keep track of dates carefully enough to link the Zeo data with the Adderall data). Between the price and the sleep disturbances, I don’t think Adderall is personally worthwhile.
A big part is that we are finally starting to apply complex systems science to psycho-neuro-pharmacology and a nootropic approach. The neural system is awesomely complex and old-fashioned reductionist science has a really hard time with complexity. Big companies spends hundreds of millions of dollars trying to separate the effects of just a single molecule from placebo – and nootropics invariably show up as “stacks” of many different ingredients (ours, Qualia , currently has 42 separate synergistic nootropics ingredients from alpha GPC to bacopa monnieri and L-theanine). That kind of complex, multi pathway input requires a different methodology to understand well that goes beyond simply what’s put in capsules.